Well, I took a can of Full Red crushed tomatoes, added some water to dilute it, added a generous helping of Loretta's Pizza Seasoning, which I like....and the result wasn't too good

I have to say--I'm kind of turned off to the "use 6-in-1 or Stanislaus as a base for making pizza sauce" idea. I haven't been able to achieve really outstanding results with either of these, using any recipe or technique.

I'd really like to try Stanislaus's actual "Pizza Sauce" (particularly their Pizzaletto New York Pizza Sauce), just to see how those work, but I apparently can't acquire them here in Canada.

From now on, I think I'm just going to try to find a good pre-made pizza sauce instead of making my sauce. It's too bad, the pre-made ones around my neck of the woods aren't really terrific...but I still think they're better than the ones I constructed with the 6-in-1 or Stanislaus.

I'm surprised that you haven't found the right sauce for your pizzas. I happen to like the 6-in-1 tomatoes for all of my pizzas, although I know that others prefer the 6-in-1s (and the Stanislaus) for deep-dish. If you can tell us what it is you are looking for in your pizza sauce, I would like to think that some one of us can offer up a recipe. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at a couple of Peter Reinhart's pizza sauces. When he was out on his book promotion tour, he was frequently interviewed about pizzas and, as a consequence, several of his recipes appeared in newspapers and on the Internet, including his recipe for crushed tomato sauce at this site: http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2003/12/10/features/food01.txt.

Try this with your Stanislaus crushed tomatoes: Take about 3 cups of of the crushed tomatoes and add enough water to achieve a borderline runny/thick sauce. Add two or three leaves of chopped fresh basil, one teaspoon dried oregano flakes, one teaspoon of sugar, and a few shakes of salt.

Thanks...actually, that's pretty much what I did (aside from the fresh basil...but honestly, I don't think it would've made much of a difference). The sauce's consistency was great, the spices tasted just right....but it was the tomatoe-y taste itself that was off. I felt the same way when I tried it with the 6-in-1. There's something about the type of NY pizza sauce I'm used to, which I've found difficult to duplicate.

Dave are you cooking the sauce? Do you add say two tablespoons of Classico olive oil to a can?What about garlic?What about sugar? A teaspoon to a can of 6in1 really brightens it up.Are you judging the taste from the pot or from the pizza?What about salt?

hehe, ok, here's what I did. I took a few big dollops of Full Red crushed tomatoes. Nice smooth consistency to them, but a bit thick. I put that in a tupperware thingy, and added water bit by bit until it thinned out enough to make a nice, smooth consistency. Perfect, so far so good. Then I added some Loretta's Pizza Seasoning (a mix of the usual spice suspects), and kept adding it until I got a nice touch of the taste of the seasoning when I smelled the sauce. From there, I didn't cook it...just put it directly on the pizza. I also refrigerated a bunch of it, and used some of that for my next pizza. Tasted the same.

It's not the spices, it's not the water...it's just that the underlying tomato taste isn't very good to me. When I sniff it straight out of the can, it doesn't smell particularly inviting either. I don't think there's a way to dress it up so that it works better--whatever I do to it, the tomato taste has to be the main ingredient underlying everything, and that's the element that doesn't taste too good

I am a bit surprised you add water. If I read your post right you are mixing on a very small quantity, not a whole can, then I would say that is a good reason for failure. Let me ask you this; do you like the taste of fresh tomatoes without anything on them. Is that the taste you seek?You did not mention adding oil or sugar.

When I went to double-check the link I provided in an earlier post to the Rinehart marinara sauce recipe, I saw that the recipe had disappeared. Unfortunately, this is a rather common occurrence with websites of newspapers. However, I was able to find another website with the recipe and I have edited my previous post to provide the new link. If the marinara recipe looks like it might be of possible interest, you may want to make a copy before it, too, disappears.

I think Randy is asking all the right questions. If your problem is that you just don't like the flavor of the fresh-packed tomatoes, like the 6-in-1s (or the Stanislaus counterpart), then you may want to look at other tomatoes. One possibility is to use some San Marzanos. Recently, while I was making NY style pizzas at the home of friends, I used a can of San Marzanos (the cheaper non-DOC tomatoes) since I didn't have any of the 6-in-1s available to me and couldn't find them at a local food specialty store. I just broke up all the San Marzano tomatoes by hand and put the entire contents of the can, including all of the juices, into a non-reactive saucepan. I heated the tomatoes on low and kept it on simmer the whole time (a trick I learned from Randy, and subsequently confirmed by a Big Dave article), until the sauce became just thick enough to be useful on pizzas. Along the way, I added herbs (dried oregano and basil), freshly-ground black pepper, and a little olive oil and, just before it was done, I added some freshly-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Because the San Marzanos are not especially sweet (a common misconception), I also added a little bit of sugar. The San Marzanos are low-acid, so the final flavor will not be tart on the tongue and you will have a reasonably fresh tasting tomato taste. The sauce won't be as sweet as the 6-in-1s unless you add a lot of sugar, but it will be a nice sauce. The single can of tomatoes (28 oz.) was just enough after cooking for two 16-inch NY style pizzas.

A variation of the simple San Marzano sauce described above is to mix both San Marzano tomatoes and 6-in-1s, or, in your case, the Stanislaus tomatoes. My daughter-in-law once did this without my knowledge and I found it so good that I asked her what was in the sauce. She said that she had leftovers of both the San Marzanos and the 6-in-1s and not enough of either to make enough sauce, so she just mixed them together and added a few herbs and a little sugar.

Thanks, everyone, for all the helpful suggestions. I've tried variations of just about everything y'all have suggested, in the past, with not very satisfying results. I haven't tried adding olive oil or sugar, though, so perhaps I'll try that.

By the way, Peter, I did try San Marzanos....three times I've tried cooking them with spices, just mixing without cooking, etc etc. I just don't seem to get any kind of good result.

Part of the problem is, by now I don't really feel like experimenting too much with it, because I hate ruining a perfectly good dough each time I screw it up! I thought about this a long time, and I'm thinking that if I could just find a good supplier of pre-made sauce, it would be a lot less time and effort on my part, as I don't have a particular desire to become a master saucemaker. If I lived in the US, this would be easy, but it's tough getting the US suppliers to ship to Canada--either they don't at all, or the shipping cost is outrageous

BTW, not everyone falls in love with the Stanislaus products. RedGreene (a member of this forum) started an interesting series of exchanges on PMQ when he expressed his initial displeasure with some Stanislaus Full Red tomatoes or sauce he purchased, based on smell and possibly the citric acid that Stanislaus adds to its tomatoes. See http://www.pmq.com/cgi-bin/tt/index.cgi/read/12722.

Maybe you reacted the same way as RedGreene. He ultimately found an answer to his concern in the form of another product.

canada dave - Pete is correct about my problems with staislaus full red. I tried everything to hide the "citric acid" taste of the full red...adding sugar, carrot peels, and finally a mixture of "full red" and "super dolce" both Stanislaus products. The super dolce is a much sweeter pizza sauce and I thought that it might help hide the acid taste. Still, I can taste and smell the acid.

I finally came to the conclusion that it was ME and not the sauce. I don't think there's anything I can do to make the full red right for me. There are many, many pizzeria owners that swear by the full red sauce, so I'm sure that it's a great product.

After reading several posts made by Dave O. and others on the PMQ site, I decided to try "Bonta pizza sauce w/basil" made by Escalon. I bought a can and added a tsp of granulated garlic, granulated onion, salt, pepper, oregano, and crused red peppers. I also had to add about half a #10 size can of water as the sauce was very thick. The result was an outstanding pizza sauce, IMO. So far I've had rave reviews from my family & friends...especially the kids.